Wednesday, February 13, 2008

reasons why Judge said lady from Cameroon loses

Ms. C told the Judge she was from Cameroon, and that she had been imprisoned because of her political opinion. The Judge ruled against Ms. C, in part because:1. C claims she joined the political party in 2001; however, her membership card was issued in the year 2002.2. C wrote an affidavit that was six paragraphs long, attached to her I-589. However, C was too busy to read it before she testified in court. So, what she said in court was different from what she had written in her affidavit. As she testified in court, the Judge looked at her affidavit. The Judge wrote down each time that Ms. C testified differently; and then asked her about her affidavit.3. The Judge knew more about the affidavit than Ms. C did. Even though the Judge hears 500 cases per year, and Ms. C went to court only this one time, the Judge knew more than Ms. C did.4. Was Ms. C embarrassed that the Judge knew more about her case than Ms. C did?5. Ms. C asked her busy friend to prepare her I-589 Application for Asylum. The friend was a nice person, but very busy, and did not want to spend very much time on the application. Ms. C told him many details, but the friend did not write them down. The friend was not a lawyer, and did not really know the rules about I-589 applications. He did not know what was important, and what was not. Ms. C. talked to the friend for perhaps 30 minutes, total. Ms. C should have talked to him for five hours, and had everything translated into a language she could understand, but she didn't.6. The translations provided to the court were incomplete. Even someone who did not know French could easily see that the English translation was missing numbers, was missing sentences, and was missing endorsements. By comparing the translation side-by-side with the original, it was easy to see the translation was incomplete